What the heck is that guy selling? (A tragicomic comic by Stephan Pastis, today's "Pearls Before Swine."
How the heck is this guy selling? (NYT article about Peter Lik)
He kinda makes me think of these people.
The Oscars are on tonight. I can't watch them, because I have neglected to set up a TV in the house (of any kind, cable or satellite or broadcast) since I moved last Summer. Which might not be that big a deal, because I have seen zero of the nominated movies. And would doubtless not know who half of the celebrities are.
So here's a question—can you not watch movies and not watch TV and still be a part of culture in the modern First World? I read. I look at still photographs. I listen to a lot of music. Is that something? Or am I out of touch? Food for thought.
Funny line: Joe Piscopo played second banana to Eddie Murphy, "...which is like being the second-most-famous dude in the Jimi Hendrix Experience." That's from an epic list by Rob Sheffield ranking all the cast members of "Saturday Night Live" from worst to best. Piscopo was ranked 66th. Quick, who are the top three? Think about it for a sec, you can guess.
How did Stephen Colbert grow somebody else's beard?
I did see one great movie this year, with S.: it was called Nebraska and it was directed by Alexander Payne and it starred Bruce Dern and June Squibb and Will Forte and it was shot in...uh...oh, never mind, I'm gonna get a reputation. It came out in 2013.
A few more links:
One photographic ("A True Picture of Black Skin," by Teju Cole)
One tragic ("My Own Life," by the wonderful and great Oliver Sacks)
...And here's "My Own Life" by David Hume, which you'll want to read if you read Oliver's piece
Oh, wait...S. took me to see one other movie this year, which was outstanding: it was called Boyhood, and it featured the same actors shot over a long period of time as they aged, an idea everybody has thought about but very few if any people have ever actually done. Written and directed by Richard Linklater. (There's a book of stills, too.) Amazing what a good movie it turned out to be. I'll be rooting for that, but insofar as it's the only nominee I've seen, I don't think my vote counts.
Well worth seeing, still, whether it wins anything or not. Wonderful movie.
Mike
(Thanks to Stan Waldhauser and S.; many readers recommended the Teju Cole and Peter Lik links)
"Open Mike" is the weekly sometimes-off-topic post published on Sundays. This week's is our attempt at a celebrity/showbiz edition. We do not do celebrity/showbiz well, but then we don't do it often, either.
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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:
Robin Dreyer: "Teju Cole's article perfectly describes the thing I've always admired so much about DeCarava. In addition to the great humanity and poetry of his photographs, he could get more image out of less silver (in the negative, of course) than any photographer I know of.
"Cole is a fine writer, and it's great to see him writing about photography."
John Krumm: "So much good in this post it makes me happy. The Lik article made me laugh when I read it last night. I had recently looked at his website, looking for images, and first only found the galleries featuring images of Peter Lik taken by some assistant there to document his amazingness, I suppose. I teared up when reading Oliver Sacks' piece in the Times a few days ago. I still need to read his book Hallucinations, which I hear is excellent. On the subject of no movie and no TV watching and whether you can still be a part of the culture, I'd guess that the Internet is increasingly the loose knot that binds us. Watch a few funny cat compilations and you are set!"
Patrick Dodds: "The David Hume piece is beautiful—thanks for the link to that Mike."
Peter Croft: "I do often wonder if I waste time watching TV, but when I see programs like Foyle's War, Silent Witness, Life on Earth, Edge of Darkness, and the forthcoming Wolf Hall dramatisation, I consider myself privileged. This is not vapid time filling, this is fine drama, wonderful writing, brilliant acting. I also feel privileged to have watched The West Wing—I've watched it twice and I probably will again. Sons of Liberty is showing here at the moment. I'm learning things about early American history that I didn't know. No, I fully agree that fine music and books are probably more rewarding. I rarely want to read a book more than once, but I listen to good music repeatedly, discovering new aspects all the time. Some TV is definitely worth watching and you need a TV to do it. You won't see programs like these at the cinema. Movies go a maximum of three hours—many TV drama series are six hours or more."
Manuel: "I have watched Boyhood. It is a highly involving, heart-warming, yet intelligent movie. I loved it. It will deserve all the Oscars it gets. (And I'm sure it'll get a few.) An interesting thing about this movie (spoiler alert): the main character becomes a student of photography by the time he's 17; in fact, there is an important dialogue taking place at a darkroom. Turns out the actor in the main role, Ellar Coltrane, became a photographer himself. You can take a peek at some of his photos. I didn't know about this outcome before I watched Boyhood, so it wasn't pivotal in my decision of watching the movie, but it was a pleasant surprise."
Paul De Zan [Monday]: "Boyhood is the best kind of genius, an almost casual genius. Dan Kois rips the academy a new one for failing to recognize this."
Mike adds: Paul did not quote from Dan's article, but it's worth a brief reprise:
By nominating Boyhood, the academy gave itself the chance to recognize a movie that is not just good but revolutionary—a film that reconsiders, in surprising and rewarding ways, the medium’s relationship with time, with storytelling, and with its audience. It’s both a singular work—no one but Richard Linklater could have made it—and a universal one, reflecting the elemental formative experiences of nearly every viewer, even those who don’t, on the surface, have a lot in common with Mason or Samantha or Olivia or Mason Sr. It’s the crowning work of a crucial American filmmaker and a profound statement about the lives we live. But the academy gave Best Picture to a movie about an actor’s identity crisis—a movie about, in Mark Harris’ perfect turn of phrase, "someone who hopes to create something as good as Boyhood."
[...]
(Sometimes, of course, epochal travesties are also just plain dumb, as with the previous one, Pulp Fiction’s loss to Forrest Gump.)
Birdman is a terrific movie. Boyhood is a masterpiece, and its loss feels different from an ordinary Oscar loss. It feels like a missed opportunity for the Oscars to seize their relevance, to control their relationship to posterity. It feels like a loss we’ll be smarting about for a long time. Ten, 20, 50 years from now, we’ll look back, and slap our heads and say, How did they let this happen?
